Music review
Three fine shows provide pleasant weekend of listening

Over the weekend, local audiences had the privilege of enjoying the fruits of three singular artists.

On Saturday evening, choral conductor Michael Schwartzkopf led the Singing Hoosiers in their 2007 spring concert at the IU Auditorium, “A Celebration of American Popular Music.” The night before, another choral director, Susan Swaney, presented her chamber choir, Voces Novae, to an audience at the Evangelical Community Church in a program devoted thematically and musically to flight. A special guest for that event was Malcolm Dalglish, the dulcimer virtuoso-singer-composer whose happy performances are almost unclassifiable.

The Singing Hoosiers, close to a hundred of them, offered a deftly paced cavalcade of songs from the Broadway stage (in a range extending from Cole Porter’s 1935 “Jubilee” to Adam Guettel’s 2005 “The Light in the Piazza”), films (“The Harvey Girls” and “Easter Parade”), and the pop repertoire (“Autumn Leaves” and Hoagy Carmichael’s classic “Stardust”). There was room even for a combination of traditional folksongs and spirituals.

Schwartzkopf had made sure the choral work would be crisp. The soloists chosen for moments in the spotlight had been well chosen, displaying fresh voices and plenty of style. And the choreography supplied by the Varsity Singers seemed at all times appropriate, very much in the conventions of American show business.

For the dancing, choreographer Molly Kravitz must be credited; for the contributions of a jaunty Vocal Jazz Ensemble, the directing of Patrice Madura. A small instrumental collective added flavor as did a fine piano accompanist, Michael Langlois.

To wind up the concert, what must have been about 50 alums of the Singing Hoosiers came to the stage to join in an uplifting delivery of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a stirring finale, without doubt.

Swaney’s Voces Novae concert on Friday, via poems and music, conjured birds and Icarus, Leonardo da Vinci’s dreamt-of flying machine and the visionary Wright brothers. There was music old (one of Brahms’ Liebeslieder about a bird taking flight) and new (the premiere of “Haiku” by Voces Novae member Gabriel Lubell, concerning clouds and sky and stars). The 18 voices of the ensemble sounded beautiful and fully into their repertoire.

Ah, yes, and then there was Malcolm Dalglish, with dulcimer and voice, whose music served to begin and end the event, the start with his syncopated declamation for the choir, “The Finches,” set to a poem by Wendell Berry, and the finish with “Walkin’ on Air,” a compelling paean to life and all that is good about it. Dalglish is a magician when on stage and put on quite a show, idiosyncratic and yet always in emotional tune with his co-starring musicians.

Pianist Ruth Kapustin and percussionist Colleen Haas added their talents to what was a delightful hour.

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The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.